What Your Clichéd Band Name Says About You

What Your Clichéd Band Name Says About You

Apart from seeing a bazillion bands over the course of four days, one of the fun parts of the CMJ Music Marathon is giggling at all the silly band names. Every year bands seem to want to outdo one another as far as outlandish names go — our pick this year is Vagina Panther, with strong competition from Electric Umbilical Cord and Kung Fu Crimewave — and after a while, you start to notice that the same words crop up again and again. What can it all mean? We’ve applied our highly scientific stereotyping technique to some of the most fashionable band name words of 2012 — so now, if you want to go and see Wild Magic Bear or Psychic Dirty Moon or Ghost Beach (spoiler: at least one of these names is real), you’ll know exactly what to expect. Also, if two or more of these words feature in one band name, you can be sure that the band in question a) is most likely from Brooklyn and b) had their name chosen by their PR company.